A Point of Inspiration wrote:Announcing Subari: 101 Nights of Wonder! A 5E-OGL game that will have new races, classes, magic, and rules, designed around the source material of a Thousand and One Nights. This is the future of our Al-Qadim project!

Has anyone heard of this project? How closely does it stick to Al-Qadim? How close can it stick to Al-Qadim, given WotC's intellectual property?

Subari: World Primer at DriveThru RPG wrote:Subari: World Primer
From A Point of Inspiration

Subari is a distant land, foreign in many ways, shaped by creatures and ideas one may never encounter in the greater world. It is a realm of hookah and spice, of coral and pearls, of riddling sphinxes and traitorous godlings.

In this short, 9 page World Primer, you'll get a taste of what's to come in our upcoming book, Subari: 101 Nights of Wonder.

I have not heard of A Point of Inspiration before, and this looks like a campaign setting, but I bet that some stuff would be useable in an Al-Qadim game.

Huh. I just now ran across this on Facebook too, and followed the link here.

I imagine that since A Point of Inspiration uses A Thousand and One Nights as inspiration, WotC cannot claim infringement for TSR era's Al Qadim; the blurb only says "this is the future of our Al Qadim campaign".

I really liked Al Qadim as a setting, and would run it for 5e as-is, the only things holding me back because of conversion-on-the-fly issues is, of course, monsters & spells.

A big THANKS! to Giant Space Hamster & Chimpman for the cookies! (Dark Side be damned!)

Long answer? We don't believe that a book is well designed if it isn't hyper-useful to a GM and at the table. What that means is that the book is very modular; lots of roll tables for designing the regions, the hexes, the cities, random encounters, mystical hookahs and teas, poisons and perfumes, and all that good stuff fill the book. ALL of that is is meant to be relatively system agnostic, though the rules provided target 5E specifically.

That being said, Subari: 101 Nights of Wonder is on the same scope as Adventures in Middle Earth. It has new races, new classes, and a huge glut of new rules for 5E. The new races and the new classes have their power allocated into different areas then the core PHB classes. What this means is that your mileage will vary if you want to use a barbarian or a warlock with our new magic system, or one of the casting classes with it, or if you compare the rogue to our Bedouin. This applies to the races as well.

The new rules, however, are perfect for any 5E game. We have rules for Verbal Duels (which are large debates between two parties), skill challenges, have made some skills into actions for combat, have flying carpet combat rules, new wound rules, rules for environmental hazards, and rules for supernatural hazards (like tomb curses and mirages made by something that WANTS to mess you up!). All of these rules are being playtested before the book is released, and there will be a public playtest document available via drivethru in the next couple of weeks.

Should everything go well, then all of the above rules will be perfect to add to your game, as well as the roll tables for making cities, NPCs, Sultans, regions, hexes, etc etc.

Things that might need some conversion.

Subari: 101 Nights of Wonder features a different magical system, so all of the spells in 5E simply don't appear in Subari. We'll be providing a document a little after official release that will help you convert how many spells a beast should have if you want to use it outside of the Subari rule set.

Which leads me to my next point--the bestiary. We have changed some of the monster types. To fit with the religion and nature of Subari, for example, both Fiends and Celestials are one type, called Divinity. Genie are no longer elemental, but Genie. Serpents are mystical creatures, and are separate from beasts. Changing the monster types back to 5E isn't hard; it's matter of splitting up one, and combining the others with elemental and beasts respectively. But, atlas, hat is still a conversion that would be needed, if desired.

How close can/will it be to Al-Qadim?

Short answer? As similar to Al-Qadim as Lord of the Rings is to Faerun.

Long answer? So the Thousand and One Nights are one of the richest sources of fantasy out there. They draw tales from everywhere as east as Spain to as west as China. They include tales from Africa and Egypt, Persia, Rome, the Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, etc. These are all filtered under the Arabian culture lens. We do the same. We draw from a WIDE range of cultures that are discussed or alluded too in the Thousand and One Nights, and then use them to make the setting. It is very different from Al-Qadim, but also very familiar.

Obviously as an artist, my goal is to do things better then the masters before me. I won't claim that Subari is better, but my goal is to create something more authentic, more rich, and more fantastic, while still keeping that amazing feeling of playing Al-Qadim. Many of my personal playtesters played Al-Qadim a lot when it first came out, and I use them as a litmus test to make sure the book isn't missing the point.

I hope this massive wall of text helps guys, and I'm down to answer more questions whenever!

This looks like a campaign setting that will re-invigorate Al Qadim campaigns from bitd. As for me, I loved the setting, but never got my hands on the later products - the actual adventures, and since I was in a place that lacked players & D&D games in general, most of my campaign ideas were put on the shelf to collect dust.

And, since I'm an official cane-waving grognard AND a recent convert to 5e, system neutral settings (although aimed at 5e rules) are most welcome at my table.

A big THANKS! to Giant Space Hamster & Chimpman for the cookies! (Dark Side be damned!)

@Thorr-Kan: Recently I put up a playtest because Subari was originally an Al-Qadim conversion MEANT for the DM's Guild. Since then, we have decided to make it our own IP, and to go our own direction with it. While we love Al-Qadim, the more I worked on the project, the more it became something else.

@Dread: I certainly hope that it'll attract some new blood to Arabian Fantasy overall, be it Al-Qadim or Kobold Press' Southlands setting. While a lot of the rules are for 5E or aimed at similiar games, as are the race/classes, over half of the book will be stuff for building the setting and making it your own. No two Subari will be the same. So, hopefully any group for any game that wants something of this flavor will find something useful!

PointOfInspiration wrote:@Thorr-Kan: Recently I put up a playtest because Subari was originally an Al-Qadim conversion MEANT for the DM's Guild. Since then, we have decided to make it our own IP, and to go our own direction with it. While we love Al-Qadim, the more I worked on the project, the more it became something else.

@Dread: I certainly hope that it'll attract some new blood to Arabian Fantasy overall, be it Al-Qadim or Kobold Press' Southlands setting. While a lot of the rules are for 5E or aimed at similiar games, as are the race/classes, over half of the book will be stuff for building the setting and making it your own. No two Subari will be the same. So, hopefully any group for any game that wants something of this flavor will find something useful!

The bolded italics part (added by me) is the best part of settings like this. I am a firm believer in everyone making settings their own without fear of being contradicted* by players who want to play in that "name brand" setting.

A big THANKS! to Giant Space Hamster & Chimpman for the cookies! (Dark Side be damned!)

PointOfInspiration wrote:@Thorr-Kan: Recently I put up a playtest because Subari was originally an Al-Qadim conversion MEANT for the DM's Guild. Since then, we have decided to make it our own IP, and to go our own direction with it. While we love Al-Qadim, the more I worked on the project, the more it became something else.

I *knew* this sounded familiar.

On one hand, shucks. I was looking forward to the AQ conversion. On the other, Adventures in Middle Earth is another favorite of mine and an excellent role model. I'll be looking forward to this. (My pocket book won't, but you can't have everything.)

PointOfInspiration wrote:@Thorr-Kan: Recently I put up a playtest because Subari was originally an Al-Qadim conversion MEANT for the DM's Guild. Since then, we have decided to make it our own IP, and to go our own direction with it. While we love Al-Qadim, the more I worked on the project, the more it became something else.

@Dread: I certainly hope that it'll attract some new blood to Arabian Fantasy overall, be it Al-Qadim or Kobold Press' Southlands setting. While a lot of the rules are for 5E or aimed at similiar games, as are the race/classes, over half of the book will be stuff for building the setting and making it your own. No two Subari will be the same. So, hopefully any group for any game that wants something of this flavor will find something useful!

The bolded italics part (added by me) is the best part of settings like this. I am a firm believer in everyone making settings their own without fear of being contradicted* by players who want to play in that "name brand" setting.

Agreed. This is one of my favorite features of 13th Age's Dragon Empire setting. It sounds like this will take a similar approach, which I'm excited to hear!

We're big proponents that DIY D&D is one of the best ways to make an RPG product. Since people make their own settings, add their own flavor, and houserule things on the fly, a modular book that can produce multiple versions of Subari just made sense to us!

We're also included narrative bits as well, to build-your-own adventure path out of the materials in the book, so that way if you want to run Subari straight, it's instantly playable with an overarching story and everything. Again, trying to make the book as usable as possible!